Vikings of the Pacific Part 10

To these deep-sea wanderers of Cook's crews, the harbor was as a fairy-land. Snow still covered the mountain tops; but a tangled forest of dank growth with roots awash in the ripple of the sea, stretched down the hillsides. Red cedar, spruce, fir,--of enormous growth, broader in girth than a cart and {188} wagon in length,--cypress with twisted and gnarled knots red against the rank green; mosses swinging from branch to branch in snaky coils wherever the clouds settled and rested; islands studding the sea like emerald gems; grouse drumming their spring song through the dark underbrush; sea-mew and Mother Carey's chickens screaming and clacking overhead; the snowy summits red as wine in the sunset glow--all made up an April scene long cherished by these adventurers of the North.

Early one morning in April the men cutting timber inland were startled to notice the underbrush alive with warriors armed. The first fear was of an ambush. Cook ordered the men to an isolated rock ready for defence; but the grand _tyee_ or chief explained by signs that his tribe was only keeping off another tribe that wanted to trade with the white men. The worst trouble was from the inordinate thieving propensities of the natives. Iron, nails, belaying pins, rudders, anchors, bits of sail, a spike that could be pulled from the rotten wood of the outer keel by the teeth of a thief paddling below--anything, everything was s.n.a.t.c.hed by the light-fingered gentry.

Nor can we condemn them for it. Their moral standard was the Wolf Code of Existence--which the white man has elaborated in his evolution--to take whatever they had the dexterity and strength to take and to keep.

When caught in theft, they did not betray as much sense of guilt as a dog stealing a bone. Why should they? Their {189} code was to take.

The chief of the Nootkas presented Cook with a sea-otter cloak. Cook reciprocated with a bra.s.s-hilted sword.

By the end of April the ships had been overhauled, and Cook was ready to sail. Porpoise were coursing the sea like greyhounds, and the stormy petrels in a clatter; but Cook was not to be delayed by storm.

Barely had the two ships cleared the harbor, when such a squall broke loose, they could do nothing but scud for open sea, turn tails to the wind, and lie helpless as logs, heads south. If it had not been for this storm, Cook would certainly have discovered that Nootka was on an island, not the coast of the mainland; but by the time the weather permitted an approach to land again, Friday, May 1, the ships were abreast that cl.u.s.ter of islands below the snowy cone of Mt. Edgec.u.mbe, Sitka, where Chirikoff's Russians had first put foot on American soil.

Cook was now at the northernmost limit of Spanish voyaging.

By the 4th of May Cook had sighted and pa.s.sed the Fairweather Range, swung round westward on the old course followed by Bering, and pa.s.sed under the shadow of St. Elias towering through the clouds in a dome of snow. On the 6th the ships were at Kyak, where Bering had anch.o.r.ed, and amid myriad ducks and gulls were approaching a broad inlet northward. Now, just as Bering had missed exploring this part of the coast owing to fog, so Cook had failed to trace that long archipelago of islands from Sitka Sound {190} northward; but here, where the coast trends straight westward, was an opening that roused hopes of a Northeast Pa.s.sage. The _Resolution_ had sprung a leak; and in the second week of May, the inlet was entered in the hope of a shelter to repair the leak and a way northeast to the Atlantic. Barely had the ships pa.s.sed up the sound, when they were enshrouded in a fog that wiped out every outline; otherwise, the high coast of glacial palisades--two hundred feet in places and four miles broad--might have been seen landlocked by mountains; but Mr. Gore launched out in a small boat steering north through haze and tide-rip. Twenty natives were seen clad in sea-otter skins, by which--the white men judged--no Russians could have come to this sound; for the Russians would not have permitted the Indians to keep such valuable sea-otter clothing. The gla.s.s beads possessed by the natives were supposed to attest proximity to traders of Hudson Bay. With an almost animal innocence of wrong, the Indians tried to steal the small boat of the _Discovery_, flourishing their spears till the white crew mustered. At another time, when the _Discovery_ lay anch.o.r.ed, few lanterns happened to be on deck. No sailors were visible. It was early in the morning and everybody was asleep, the boat dark. The natives swarmed up the ship's sides like ants invading a sugar canister. Looking down the hatches without seeing any whites, they at once drew their knives and began to plunder. The whites dashed up the hatchway and drove the {191} plunderers over the rails at sword point. East and north the small boats skirted the mist-draped sh.o.r.es, returning at midnight with word the inlet was a closed sh.o.r.e. There was no Northeast Pa.s.sage. They called the spider-shaped bay Prince William Sound; and at ten in the morning headed out for sea.

Here a fresh disappointment awaited them. The natives of Prince William Sound had resembled the Eskimos of Greenland so much that the explorers were prepared to find themselves at the westward end of the American continent ready to round north into the Atlantic. A long ledge of land projected into the sea. They called this Cape Elizabeth, pa.s.sed it, noted the reef of sunken rocks lying directly athwart a terrific tidal bore, and behold! not the end of the continent--no, not by a thousand miles--but straight across westward, beneath a smoking volcano that tinged the fog ruby-red, a lofty, naked spur three miles out into the sea, with crest hidden among the clouds and rock-base awash in thundering breakers. This was called Cape Douglas. Between these two capes was a tidal flood of perhaps sixty miles' breadth.

Where did it come from? Up went hopes again for the Northeast Pa.s.sage, and the twenty thousand pounds! Spite of driftwood, and roily waters, and a flood that ran ten miles an hour, and a tidal bore that rose twenty feet, up the pa.s.sage they tacked, east to west, west to east, plying up half the month of June in rain and sleet, with the heavy pall of black smoke {192} rolling from the volcano left far on the offing!

At last the opening was seen to turn abruptly straight east. Out rattled the small boats. Up the muddy waters they ran for nine miles till salt water became fresh water, and the explorers found themselves on a river. In irony, this point was called Turn-Again. The whole bay is now known as Cook's Inlet. Mr. King was sent ash.o.r.e on the south side of Turn-Again to take possession. Twenty natives in sea-otter skins stood by watching the ceremony of flag unfurled and the land of their fathers being declared the possession of England. These natives were plainly acquainted with the use of iron; but "I will be bold to say," relates Cook, "they do not know the Russians, or they would not be wearing these valuable sea-otter skins."

No Northeast Pa.s.sage here! So out they ply again for open sea through misty weather; and when it clears, they are in the green treeless region west of Cook's Inlet. Past Kadiak, past Bering's Foggy Island, past the Shumagins where Bering's first sailor to die of scurvy had been buried, past volcanoes throwing up immense quant.i.ties of blood-red smoke, past pinnacled rocks, through mists so thick the roar of the breakers is their only guide, they glide, or drift, or move by inches feeling the way cautiously, fearful of wreck.

Toward the end of June a great hollow green swell swings them through the straits past Oonalaska, northward at last! Natives are seen in green trousers {193} and European shirts; natives who take off their hats and make a bow after the pompous fashion of the Russians.

Twice natives bring word to Cook by letter and sign that the Russians of Oonalaska wish to see him. But Captain Cook is not anxious to see the Russians just now. He wants to forestall their explorations northward and take possession of the Polar realm for England. In August they are in Bristol Bay, north of the Aleutians, directly opposite Asia. Here Dr. Anderson, the surgeon, dies of consumption.

Not so much fog now. They can follow the mainland. Far ahead there projects straight out in the sea a long spit of land backed by high hills, the westernmost point of North America--Cape Prince of Wales!

Bering is vindicated! Just fifty years from Bering's exploration of 1728, the English navigator finds what Bering found: that America and Asia are _not_ united; that no Northeast Pa.s.sage exists; that no great oceanic body lies north of New Spain; that Alaska--as the Russian maps had it after Bering's death--is not an island.

Wind, rain, roily, shoaly seas breaking clear over the ship across decks drove Cook out from land to deeper water. With an Englishman's thoroughness for doing things and to make deadly sure just how the two continents lay to each other, Cook now scuds across Bering Strait thirty-nine miles to the Chukchee land of Siberia in Asia. How he praises the accuracy of poor {194} Bering's work along this coast: Bering, whose name had been a target for ridicule and contempt from the time of his death; whose death was declared a blunder; whose voyage was considered a failure; whose charts had been rejected and distorted by the learned men of the world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Ice Islands.]

From the Chukchee villages of Asia, Cook sailed back to the American coast, pa.s.sing north of Bering Straits directly in mid-channel. It is an odd thing, while very little ice-drift is met in Bering Sea, you have no sooner pa.s.sed north of the straits than a white world surrounds you. Fog, ice, ice, fog--endlessly, with palisades of ice twelve feet high, east and west, far as the eye can see! The crew amuse themselves alternately gathering driftwood for fuel, and hunting {195} walrus over the ice. It is in the North Pacific that the walrus attains its great size--nine feet in length, broader across its back than any animal known to the civilized world. These piebald yellow monsters lay wallowing in herds of hundreds on the ice-fields. At the edge lay always one on the watch; and no matter how dense the fog, these walrus herds on the ice, braying and roaring till the surf shook, acted as a fog-horn to Cook's ships, and kept them from being jammed in the ice-drift. Soon two-thirds of the furs got at Nootka had spoiled of rain-rot. The vessels were iced like ghost ships. Tack back and forward as they might, no pa.s.sage opened through the ice. Suddenly Cook found himself in shoal water, on a lee sh.o.r.e, long and low and shelving, with the ice drifting on his ships. He called the place Icy Cape. It was their farthest point north; and the third week of August they were compelled to scud south to escape the ice. Backing away toward Asia, he reached the North Cape there. It was almost September.

In accordance with the secret instructions, Cook turned south to winter at the Sandwich Islands, pa.s.sing Serdze Kamen, where Bering had turned back in 1728, East Cape on the Straits of Bering just opposite the American Prince of Wales, and St. Lawrence islands where the ships anch.o.r.ed.

Norton Sound was explored on the way back; and October saw Cook down at Oonalaska, where Ledyard was sent overland across the island to conduct the {196} Russian traders to the English ships. Three Russians came to visit Cook. One averred that he had been with Bering on the expedition of 1741, and the rough adventurers seemed almost to worship the Dane's memory. Later came Ismyloff, chief factor of the Russian fur posts in Oonalaska, attended by a retinue of thirty native canoes, very suave as to manners, very polished and pompous when he was not too convivial, but very chary of any information to the English, whose charts he examined with keenest interest, giving them to understand that the Empress of Russia had first claim to all those parts of the country, rising, quaffing a gla.s.s and bowing profoundly as he mentioned the august name. "Friends and fellow-countrymen glorious," the English were to the smooth-tongued Russian, as they drank each other's health.

Learning that Cook was to visit Avacha Bay, Ismyloff proffered a letter of introduction to Major Behm, Russian commander of Kamchatka. Cook thought the letter one of commendation. It turned out otherwise. Fur traders, world over, always resented the coming of the explorer.

Ismyloff was neither better nor worse than his kind.[2]

Heavy squalls pursued the ships all the way from Oonalaska, left on October 26, to the Sandwich Islands, reached in the new year 1779. A thousand canoes of enthusiastic natives welcomed Cook back to the sunny islands of the Pacific. Before the explorer {197} could anchor, natives were swimming round the ship like shoals of fish. When Cook landed, the whole population prostrated itself at his feet as if he had been a G.o.d. It was a welcome change from the desolate cold of the inhospitable north.

Situated midway in the Pacific, the Sandwich Islands were like an oasis in a watery waste to Cook's mariners. The ships had dropped anchor in the centre of a horn-shaped bay called Karakakooa, in Hawaii, about two miles from horn to horn. On the sandy flats of the north horn was the native village of Kowrowa: amid the cocoanut grove of the other horn, the village of Kakooa, with a well and Morai, or sacred burying-ground, close by. Between the two villages alongsh.o.r.e ran a high ledge of black coral rocks. In all there were, perhaps, four hundred houses in the two villages, with a population of from two to three thousand warriors; but the bay was the rallying place for the entire group of islands; and the islands numbered in all several hundred thousand warriors.

Picture, then, the scene to these wanderers of the northern seas: the long coral reef, wave-washed by bluest of seas; the little village and burying-ground and priests' houses nestling under the cocoanut grove at one end of the semicircular bay, the village where Terreeoboo, king of the island, dwelt on the long sand beach at the other end; and swimming through the water like shoals of fish, climbing over the ships' rigging like monkeys, crowding the decks of the _Discovery_ {198} so that the ship heeled over till young chief Pareea began tossing the intruders by the scuff of the neck back into the sea--hundreds, thousands, of half-naked, tawny-skinned savages welcoming the white men back to the islands discovered by them. Chief among the visitors to the ship was Koah, a little, old, emaciated, shifty-eyed priest with a wry neck and a scaly, leprous skin, who at once led the small boats ash.o.r.e, driving the throngs back with a magic wand and drawing a mystic circle with his wizard stick round a piece of ground near the Morai, or burying-place, where the white men could erect their tents beside the cocoanut groves.

The magic line was called a _taboo_. Past the tabooed line of the magic wand not a native would dare to go. Here Captain King, a.s.sisted by the young midshipman, Vancouver, landed with a guard of eight or ten mariners to overhaul the ships' masts, while the rest of the two crews obtained provisions by trade.

Cook was carried off to the very centre of the Morai--a circular enclosure of solid stone with images and priests' houses at one end, the skulls of slain captives at the other. Here priests and people did the white explorer homage as to a G.o.d, sacrificing to him their most sacred animal--a strangled pig.

All went well for the first few days. A white gunner, who died, was buried within the sacred enclosure of the Morai. The natives loaded the white men's boats with provisions. In ten days the wan, gaunt {199} sailors were so sleek and fat that even the generous entertainers had to laugh at the transformation. Old King Terreeoboo came clothed in a cloak of gaudy feathers with spears and daggers at his belt and a train of priestly retainers at his heels to pay a visit of state to Cook; and a guard of mariners was drawn up at arms under the cocoanut grove to receive the visitor with fitting honor. When the king learned that Cook was to leave the bay early in February, a royal proclamation gathered presents for the ships; and Cook responded by a public display of fireworks.

Now it is a sad fact that when a highly civilized people meet an uncivilized people, each race celebrates the occasion by appropriating all the evil qualities of the other. Vices, not virtues, are the first to fraternize. It was as unfair of Cook's crew to judge the islanders by the rabble swarming out to steal from the ships, as it would be for a newcomer to judge the people of New York by the pickpockets and under-world of the water front. And it must not be forgotten that the very quality that had made Cook successful--the quality to dare--was a danger to him here. The natives did not violate the sacred _taboo_, which the priest had drawn round the white men's quarters of the grove.

It was the white men who violated it by going outside the limit; and the conduct of the white sailors for the sixteen days in port was neither better nor worse than the conduct of sailors to-day who go on a wild spree with the lowest elements of the harbor. {200} The savages were quick to find out that the white G.o.ds were after all only men.

The true story of what happened could hardly be written by Captain King, who finished Cook's journal; though one can read between the lines King's fear of his commander's rashness. The facts of the case are given by the young American, John Ledyard, of Connecticut, who was corporal of marines and in the very thick of the fight.

At the end of two weeks the white seamen were, perhaps, satiated of their own vices, or suffering from the sore head that results from prolonged spreeing. At all events the thieving, which had been condoned at first, was now punished by soundly flogging the natives.

The old king courteously hinted it was time for the white men to go.

The mate, who was loading masts and rudder back on board the _Resolution_, asked the savages to give him a hand. The islanders had lost respect for the white men of such flagrant vices. They pretended to give a helping hand, but only jostled the mate about in the crowd.

The Englishman lost his temper, struck out, and bl.u.s.tered. The sh.o.r.e rang with the shrill laughter of the throngs. In vain the chiefs of authority interposed. The commands to help the white men were answered by showers of stones directly inside the _taboo_. Ledyard was ordered out with a guard of sailors to protect the white men loading the _Resolution_. The guard was pelted black and blue. "There was nothing to do," relates Ledyard, "but move to new lands where our vices {201} were not known." At last all was in readiness to sail--one thing alone lacking--wood; and the white men dare not go inland for the needed wood.

So far the entire blame rested on the sailors. Now Cook committed his cardinal error. With that very dare and quickness to utilize every available means to an end--whether the end justified the means--Cook ordered his men ash.o.r.e to seize the rail fence round the top of the stone burying-ground--the sacred Morai--as fuel for his ships. Out rushed the priests from the enclosure in dire distress. Was this their reward for protecting Cook with the wand of the sacred _taboo_? Two hatchets were offered the leading priest as pay. He spurned them as too loathsome to be touched. Leading the way, Cook ordered his men to break the fence down, and proffered three hatchets, thrusting them into the folds of the priest's garment. Pale and quivering with rage, the priest bade a slave remove the profaning iron. Down tumbled the fence!

Down the images on poles! Down the skulls of the dead sacred to the savage as the sepulchre to the white man! It may be said to the credit of the crew, that the men were thoroughly frightened at what they were ordered to do; but they were not too frightened to carry away the images as relics. Cook alone was blind to risk. As if to add the last straw to the Hawaiians' endurance, when the ships unmoored and sailed out from the bay, where but two weeks before they had been so royally welcomed, they carried {202} eloping wives and children from the lower cla.s.ses of the two villages.

It was one of the cases where retribution came so swift it was like a living Nemesis. If the weather had continued fair, doubtless wives and children would have been dumped off at some near harbor, the incident considered a joke, and the Englishmen gone merrily on their way; but a violent gale arose. Women and children were seized with a seasickness that was no joke. The decks resounded with such wails that Cook had to lie to in the storm, put off the pinnace, and send the visitors ash.o.r.e.

What sort of a tale they carried back, we may guess. Meanwhile the storm had snapped the foremast of the _Resolution_. As if rushing on his ruin, Cook steered back for the bay and anch.o.r.ed midway between the two villages. Again the tents were pitched beside the Morai under the cocoanut groves. Again the wand was drawn round the tenting place; but the white men had taught the savages that the _taboo_ was no longer sacred. Where thousands had welcomed the ships before, not a soul now appeared. Not a canoe cut the waters. Not a voice broke the silence of the bay.

The sailors were sour; Cook, angry. When the men rowed to the villages for fresh provisions, they were pelted with stones. When at night-time the savages came to the ships with fresh food, they asked higher prices and would take only daggers and knives in pay. Only by firing its great guns could the {203} _Discovery_ prevent forcible theft by the savages offering provisions; and in the scuffle of pursuit after one thief, Pareea--a chief most friendly to the whites--was knocked down by a white man's oar. "I am afraid," remarked Cook, "these people will compel me to use violent measures." As if to test the mettle of the tacit threat, Sunday, daybreak, February 14, revealed that the large rowboat of the _Discovery_ had been stolen.

When Captain King, who had charge of the guard repairing the masts over under the cocoanut grove came on board Sunday morning, he found Cook loading his gun, with a line of soldiers drawn up to go ash.o.r.e in order to allure the ruler of the islands on board, and hold him as hostage for the rest.i.tution of the lost boat. Clerke, of the _Discovery_, was too far gone in consumption to take any part. Cook led the way on the pinnace with Ledyard and six marines. Captain King followed in the launch with as many more. All the other small boats of the two ships were strung across the harbor from Kakooa, where the grove was, to Kowrowa, where the king dwelt, with orders to fire on any canoe trying to escape.

Before the fearless leader, the savages prostrated themselves in the streets. Cook strode like a conqueror straight to the door of the king's abode. It was about nine in the morning. Old Terreeoboo--peace lover and lazy--was just awake and only too willing to go aboard with Cook as the easiest way out {204} of the trouble about the stolen boat.

But just here the high-handedness of Cook frustrated itself. That line of small boats stretched across the harbor began firing at an escaping canoe. A favorite chief was killed. Word of the killing came as the old king was at the water's edge to follow Cook; and a wife caught him by the arm to drag him back. Suddenly a throng of a thousand surrounded the white men. Some one stabs at Phillips of the marines.

Phillips's musket comes down b.u.t.t-end on the head of the a.s.sailant. A spear is thrust in Cook's very face. He fires blank shot. The harmlessness of the shot only emboldens the savages. Women are seen hurrying off to the hills; men don their war mats. There is a rush of the white men to get positions along the water edge free for striking room; of the savages to prevent the whites' escape. A stone hits Cook.

"What man did that?" thunders Cook; and he shoots the culprit dead.

Then the men in the boats lose their heads, and are pouring volleys of musketry into the crowds.

"It is hopeless," mutters Cook to Phillips; but amid a shower of stones above the whooping of the savages, he turns with his back to the crowd, and shouts for the two small boats to cease firing and pull in for the marines. His caution came too late.

His back is to his a.s.sailants. An arm reached out--a hand with a dagger; and the dagger rips quick as a flash under Cook's shoulder-blade. He fell without a groan, face in the water, and was hacked to pieces {205} before the eyes of his men. Four marines had already fallen. Phillips and Ledyard and the rest jumped into the sea and swam for their lives. The small boats were twenty yards out.

Scarcely was Phillips in the nearest, when a wounded sailor, swimming for refuge, fainted and sank to the bottom. Though half stunned from a stone blow on his head and bleeding from a stab in the back, Phillips leaped to the rescue, dived to bottom, caught the exhausted sailor by the hair of the head and so s.n.a.t.c.hed him into the boat. The dead and the arms of the fugitives had been deserted in the wild scramble for life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Death of Cook.]

Meanwhile the masts of the _Resolution_, guarded by {206} only six marines, were exposed to the warriors of the other village at the cocoanut grove. Protected by the guns of the two ships under the direction of Clerke, who now became commander, masts and men were got aboard by noon. At four that afternoon, Captain King rowed toward sh.o.r.e for Cook's body. He was met by the little leprous priest Koah, swimming halfway out. Though tears of sorrow were in Koah's treacherous red-rimmed eyes as he begged that Clerke and King might come ash.o.r.e to parley. King judged it prudent to hold tightly on the priest's spear handle while the two embraced.

Night after night for a week, the conch-sh.e.l.ls blew their challenge of defiance to the white men. Fires rallying to war danced on the hillsides. Howls and shouts of derision echoed from the sh.o.r.e. The stealthy paddle of treacherous spies could be heard through the dark under the keel of the white men's ships. Cook's clothing, sword, hat, were waved in scorn under the sailors' faces. The women had hurried to the hills. The old king was hidden in a cave, where he could be reached only by a rope ladder; and emissary after emissary tried to lure the whites ash.o.r.e. One pitch-dark night, paddles were heard under the keels. The sentinels fired; but by lantern light two terrified faces appeared above the rail of the _Resolution_. Two frightened, trembling savages crawled over the deck, prostrated themselves at Clerke's feet, and slowly unrolled a small wrapping of cloth that revealed a small {207} piece of human flesh--the remains of Cook. Dead silence fell on the horrified crew. Then Clerke's stern answer was that unless the bones of Cook were brought to the ships, both native villages would be destroyed. The two savages were former friends of Cook's and warned the whites not to be allured on land, nor to trust Koah, the leper priest, on the ships.

Again the conch-sh.e.l.ls blew their challenge all night through the darkness. Again the war fires danced; but next morning the guns of the _Discovery_ were trained on Koah, when he tried to come on board. That day sailors were landed for water and set fire to the village of the cocoanut groves to drive a.s.sailants back. How quickly human nature may revert to the beast type! When the white sailors returned from this skirmish, they carried back to the ships with them, the heads of two Hawaiians they had slain. By Sat.u.r.day, the 20th, masts were in place and the boats ready to sail. Between ten and eleven o'clock in the morning, a long procession of people was seen filing slowly down the hills preceded by drummers and a white flag. Word was signalled that Cook's bones were on sh.o.r.e to be delivered. Clerke put out in a small boat to receive the dead commander's remains--from which all flesh had been burned. On Sunday, the 21st, the entire bay was tabooed. Not a native came out of the houses. Silence lay over the waters. The funeral service was read on board the _Resolution_, and the coffin committed to the deep.

{208} A curious reception awaited the ships at Avacha Bay, Kamchatka, whence they now sailed. Ismyloff's letter commending the explorers to the governor of Avacha Bay brought thirty Cossack soldiers floundering through the sh.o.r.e ice of Petropaulovsk under the protection of pointed cannon. Ismyloff, with fur trader's jealousy of intrusion, had warned the Russian commander that the English ships were pirates like Benyowsky, the Polish exile, who had lately sacked the garrisons of Kamchatka, stolen the ships, and sailed to America. However, when Cook's letters were carried overland to Bolcheresk, to Major Behm, the commander, all went well. The little log-thatched fort with its windows of talc opened wide doors to the far-travelled English. The Russian ladies of the fort donned their China silks. The samovars were set singing. English sailors gave presents of their grog to the Russians. Russian Cossacks presented their tobacco to the English, adding three such cheers as only Cossacks can give and a farewell song.

In 1779 Clerke made one more attempt to pa.s.s through the northern ice-fields from Pacific to Atlantic; but he accomplished nothing but to go over the ground explored the year before under Cook. On the 5th of July at ten P.M. in the lingering sunlight of northern lat.i.tudes, just as the boats were halfway through the Straits of Bering, the fog lifted, and for the first time in history--as far as known--the westernmost part of America, Cape Prince of Wales, and the {209} eastern-most part of Asia, East Cape, were simultaneously seen by white men.

Finding it impossible to advance eastward, Clerke decided there was no Northeast Pa.s.sage by way of the Pacific to the Atlantic; and on the 21st of July, to the cheers of his sailors, announced that the ships would turn back for England.[3]

Poor Clerke died of consumption on the way, August 22, 1779, only thirty-eight years of age, and was buried at Petropaulovsk beside La Croyere de l'Isle, who perished on the Bering expedition. The boats did not reach England till October of 1780. They had not won the reward of twenty thousand pounds; but they had charted a strange coast for a distance of three thousand five hundred miles, and paved the way for the vast commerce that now plies between Occident and Orient.[4]

[1] The question may occur, why in the account of Cook's and Bering's voyage, the lat.i.tude is not oftener given. The answer is, the lat.i.tudes as given by Cook and Bering vary so much from the modern, it would only confuse the reader trying to follow a modern map.

[2] This is the Ismyloff who was marooned by Benyowsky.